When I managed a team, we had a team meeting every other week. At the beginning of the year, I booked the conference room for the entire year’s worth of meetings.
It won’t surprise you that not all of those meetings happened.
What surprised me is new research out of Norway that says that 30 percent of scheduled meetings never happen and it costs businesses a fortune. They estimate, for instance, that a business with 250 employees in New York City wastes almost $150,000 a year on canceled meetings.
Yikes.
To keep reading, click here: Meetings Can Be a Waste of Time and Money, but Skipping them Isn’t Free
Conversely, what is just as wasteful as cancelling a meeting is holding one without an agenda and without an intent to make decisions results in death by meeting.
We book in advance, not so much to hold the rooms, although that is part of it, but to hold the spot in people’s schedules. Our calendars fill up so fast that it is hard to get more than two people together within three business days. And most meetings take place, so I suppose not so much wasted space.
What Camellia said – aside from needing to make sure we have the room, we need to make sure we get on people’s schedules. It’s also one less recurring task we have to do.
This study reminds me a bit of one that came out 5? 10? years ago that showed how infrequently fire departments are called out to actual fires – better fire safety codes = fewer fires = fewer calls. But I don’t think to many people would suggest that we should save money by cutting down on the number of fire departments. Because while you might not need them often, when you need them you really need them and there’s no way to really replace the service they provide.
Could large companies (and even some smaller ones) make do with fewer conference spaces? Maybe. But when you need them, you need them.